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This blog is predominately about camera trapping in California. We camera trap to save our souls and to teach primary school students about biology and conservation. We will also touch on other camera trapping news and musings, sets from afar, mediocre herpetology, sucky birding, and other natural history discussions.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Pelagic Trip Part II

I too was really worried about getting seasick. I laid off the beer and bourbon blend the night before, took a dramamine before bed, another when I woke up and one more on the boat at about the 5 hour mark. Went to the store and bought ginger snaps, ginger beer and sunscreen. I failed to use all three and only the lack of sunscreen came back to bite me. Never got sick, never really got close, so that was a huge positive.

Seas not too rough but a little windy

I meant to rent a nice sharp zoom lens, but put it off until it was too late, so I shot all of these pictures with an unsharp 18-270mm Tamron lens. I like the lens a lot for its versatility when hiking and you only want to carry one lens, but it is a major compromise. My 100mm Canon is quite sharp but I didn't think it would have the reach I needed and outside of the gulls right off the stern wouldn't have done me much good. So non-sharp images it is. Also the higher ISO to get quicker shutter times is probably a contributing factor.

Western Gull

I suck at birding. Not sure if these are Western or California gulls

Pomerine Jaeger (lifer)

Black-footed Albatross (lifer)

Another Pomerine Jaeger

Heerman's Gull (lifer according to ebird profile. I am sure I have seen before, but not paid close enough attention too. I tend to ignore gulls, which is a huge detriment to trying to learn more about birds. Would be kind of like a herper just ignoring all Ambystomas, poor form)

This Pomerine Jaeger is much more badass than the one's above

Pink-footed Shearwater (lifer, no pics of the Buller's Shearwater, also a lifer)

Want to also thank Seagull Steve and his pals, Christian (a different one than CTC Christian) and Amy, for their good company and most importantly putting up with our novice questions. Nice, wittier than all hell, sarcastic and a little vulgar. Couldn't ask for anything more in company on a long day. They all even decided a day of pelagic birding was not enough and that they needed to go find a first county record the next morning. Steve will have to return to the birder rankings as that might be enough to move up to #6 in the U.S. of A. Seagull Steve is promising photos from the trip soon and they will blow mine out of the water so check his blog often.

1 comment:

Albatross! Such a great bird on so many levels. Especially since, for me, it invokes memories of Monty Python's great movie theater sketch. "Albatross!" "What flavour is it?" "It's a bloody sea bird...it's not any bloody flavour. Albatross!"